How To Train Your Dragon 3: Fitting End To The Greatest Animated Trilogy…

So yesterday was a great day. There are many things that can turn a bad day into a great one—finding money in your pocket, Brandon Bolden resigning with the Patriots, sex—but nothing gets the blood pumping quite like “Super Tuesday.” For those unfamiliar, “Super Tuesday” is when the cinema near my house offers $5 tickets. Essentially, you can see a movie for the same amount of money you could purchase a foot-long sweet onion chicken teriyaki at Subway circa 2006 before they caved like frauds and abolished the promotion.

Walking up to the theater, I had planned on rewatching Green Book or Fighting With My Family but, as always, I’m a company man. I understand the Internet can’t go a day without my takes so I resolved to see something new for the sake of a fresh review.

What I ended up walking into was How To Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World. For the record, I’ve seen the first two of these puppies and I can assuredly say this is the most underrated animated franchise of all time. Say what you want, but I defy you to find me a better animated trilogy on the planet (Toy Story has a fourth coming out so it’s not longer a trilogy). Everything about the first two movies was nearly perfect, and this one wasn’t too far behind.

To be honest, I think one of the reasons this franchise doesn’t get the publicity/respect it deserves is because, well, there’s not much to talk about here. Unlike most movies (like Captain Marvel, which I reviewed yesterday), I could punch holes through my keyboard for an hour about what I liked/hated but with the How To Train Your Dragon films, I always leave the theater with a “Yeah, that was really good” and that’s about it.

Basically, this movie follows the story of these Vikings as they search their world for a place where their dragons can live in peace. Unfortunately, douchebags are always trying to kill dragons for some reason (I forget why but people hate these things). Long story short, the main dragon falls in love with a female dragon as Hiccup, the primary protagonist, searches for this “Hidden World” where all the dragons live. Craziest part is that it’s based on a true story.

But yeah, as I said, I don’t have much to say about this movie other than that it was really friggen’ good. It was well paced—in other words, it was short—and filled in any plot holes left by the first and second with an emotionally/philosophically rich conclusion. There’s just enough humor to prevent adults from bringing Jameson nips into the theater and just enough visual affects to keep kids from getting restless. Also, the female dragon is an absolute rocket. By far the sexiest female character in an animated motion picture since Lola Bunny.

While we’re on the topic of the third, I would also HIGHLY suggest rewatching the predecessors. For some reason, the initial film is called How To Bang Your Dragon and, unlike the last two, it’s live action and never premiered in theaters. Not a lot of character development but there’s a really long, oddly arousing sex scene that takes up the entire second act. Check it out…